Art and Destruction
Apr. 8th, 2008 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sienamysticDragged Bemo off to the gym (where I discovered that the version of the elliptical with the ski-pole thingies works much, much better for me than the one without) and then off to a lecture on campus: John Pollini, from the University of Southern California, speaking on Christian Destruction and Desecration of Images of Classical Antiquities.
The lecture was very interesting - I knew that many pagan images were taken down and otherwise destroyed by early Christians - but hearing and seeing the scope of things was very different. Aside from a little stridency, I thought the lecture was excellent. [Bemo wondered if some of the students leaving early were just heading out to make sure they caught the basketball game, or if they were offended at the decidedly non-sympathetic "Christians (and to a lesser extent Muslims and Jews) break things they don't approve of because OMG DEMONS" bent of the lecture.] I can excuse some stridency since he was obviously so passionate about his subject and since he did a very good job of laying out the evidence, both physical and literary, to back up his claims. And, you know, early Christians were pretty proud of themselves for destroying pagan statuary, so I don't think that calling them out on it is exactly unfair. They did what they thought was right, but so did the Taliban when they blew up the giant Buddas in Afghanistan in the past few years, and so did the Russian Communist Party when it removed relics of saints from many churches and publicly destroyed them (examples Pollani brought up at the beginning of his lecture).
He also covered the difficulty of determining exactly how sculpture gets damaged: time, weathering, acts of nature, and war are all likely. Additionally, Christians deliberately destroyed pagan sculpture, Christian iconoclasts in the fourth and fifth centuries destroyed Christian images, Muslims may have done the destroying instead of the Christians in some cases, and sometimes images were destroyed as part of worship - he gave the example of some painted Christian religious figures that had the eyes scratched away because people would chip away bits and drink them to cure eye disease, and pagan worshipers at some temples scratched away interior walls to take home and drink for various healing purposes. He also discussed the fact that generally, it was the local bishop or saint whipping people up into a frenzy of destruction. The Emperor Theodosius in 380 did call for the destruction of pagan temples, formally banned pagan worship, and said that Nicene Christianity was the religion of the empire. However, more actual damage to sculptures and other images was done by people like Shenoute, a fifth-century Egyptian abbot (now a saint in the Eastern Orthodox church) who coined the phrase "there is no crime in Christ" and who frequently used his monks as a bully squad. The quote is taken from a letter written by Shenoute to a pagan magistrate, after Shenoute and his gang broke into the man's house and destroyed any idols they found inside it and the magistrate attempted to have him charged with the crime of "banditry," or "illegal use of force." (A little poking around turned up this book, which looks really interesting: There is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, By Michael Gaddis. Berkeley:University of California Press, 2005. It seems to cover both early violence against Christians, and later violence by Christians against pagans.)
He showed a lot of sculptures (some on the Parthenon, others from various sites in Egypt, Italy, Turkey, and Greece) where crosses had been chipped on foreheads, over eyes, and on torsos of statues. One of the most startling examples was an Isis figure that had the head completely obliterated and replaced with a giant Maltese cross - very strange and wrong looking. I do wish he had organized his lecture a bit differently, however. Aside from a lot of repetition, he waited until deep in the lecture to show a particularly interesting bit of Byzantine graffiti showing a man armed with a shield marked with a cross fending off a bird demon attacking him. Overhead was written the Greek word meaning "to be possessed by a demon." (The graffiti was scribbled on the porch of a pagan temple.) Up until this point he had sort of hammered in the point that a lot of early Christians feared pagan temples and artwork as being literally possessed with demons, thus the systematic obliteration, desecration, and destruction that was carried out. After hearing him say the word "demons" twenty million times, it almost got comical and as if he was overstating his case - and then he whips out this little graffiti that said in one slide everything he had been trying to get across.
His lecture also pointed out an interesting bit of cultural bias - it was genuinely startling to hear "Christians desecrated this pagan temple by turning it into a church" because one is so used to hearing about Christian churches being desecrated and because the bias (even among scholars) has been that Christians turning temples into churches was sort of a bonus - that the temples were being "corrected" somehow. But, well - a pagan worshiper at that temple would have indeed considered it a desecration - a de-consecration, or a forcible change from the place's original purpose. And since Christians (of which I am one) would no doubt feel very strongly about St. Peter's being turned into a Zoroastrian fire altar, I think the feelings of pagan worshipers who have been forced to watch as their temple of Athena was turned into a Christian church can be imagined.
Anyway, it was an interesting lecture and let me ponder some big thinky thoughts, so it was a night well spent. But I'm so disappointed that he didn't use one of my favorite little medieval panels, now at the National Gallery in DC - St. Appolonia Destroying a Pagan Idol, aka Saint With Sledgehammer.
The lecture was very interesting - I knew that many pagan images were taken down and otherwise destroyed by early Christians - but hearing and seeing the scope of things was very different. Aside from a little stridency, I thought the lecture was excellent. [Bemo wondered if some of the students leaving early were just heading out to make sure they caught the basketball game, or if they were offended at the decidedly non-sympathetic "Christians (and to a lesser extent Muslims and Jews) break things they don't approve of because OMG DEMONS" bent of the lecture.] I can excuse some stridency since he was obviously so passionate about his subject and since he did a very good job of laying out the evidence, both physical and literary, to back up his claims. And, you know, early Christians were pretty proud of themselves for destroying pagan statuary, so I don't think that calling them out on it is exactly unfair. They did what they thought was right, but so did the Taliban when they blew up the giant Buddas in Afghanistan in the past few years, and so did the Russian Communist Party when it removed relics of saints from many churches and publicly destroyed them (examples Pollani brought up at the beginning of his lecture).
He also covered the difficulty of determining exactly how sculpture gets damaged: time, weathering, acts of nature, and war are all likely. Additionally, Christians deliberately destroyed pagan sculpture, Christian iconoclasts in the fourth and fifth centuries destroyed Christian images, Muslims may have done the destroying instead of the Christians in some cases, and sometimes images were destroyed as part of worship - he gave the example of some painted Christian religious figures that had the eyes scratched away because people would chip away bits and drink them to cure eye disease, and pagan worshipers at some temples scratched away interior walls to take home and drink for various healing purposes. He also discussed the fact that generally, it was the local bishop or saint whipping people up into a frenzy of destruction. The Emperor Theodosius in 380 did call for the destruction of pagan temples, formally banned pagan worship, and said that Nicene Christianity was the religion of the empire. However, more actual damage to sculptures and other images was done by people like Shenoute, a fifth-century Egyptian abbot (now a saint in the Eastern Orthodox church) who coined the phrase "there is no crime in Christ" and who frequently used his monks as a bully squad. The quote is taken from a letter written by Shenoute to a pagan magistrate, after Shenoute and his gang broke into the man's house and destroyed any idols they found inside it and the magistrate attempted to have him charged with the crime of "banditry," or "illegal use of force." (A little poking around turned up this book, which looks really interesting: There is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, By Michael Gaddis. Berkeley:University of California Press, 2005. It seems to cover both early violence against Christians, and later violence by Christians against pagans.)
He showed a lot of sculptures (some on the Parthenon, others from various sites in Egypt, Italy, Turkey, and Greece) where crosses had been chipped on foreheads, over eyes, and on torsos of statues. One of the most startling examples was an Isis figure that had the head completely obliterated and replaced with a giant Maltese cross - very strange and wrong looking. I do wish he had organized his lecture a bit differently, however. Aside from a lot of repetition, he waited until deep in the lecture to show a particularly interesting bit of Byzantine graffiti showing a man armed with a shield marked with a cross fending off a bird demon attacking him. Overhead was written the Greek word meaning "to be possessed by a demon." (The graffiti was scribbled on the porch of a pagan temple.) Up until this point he had sort of hammered in the point that a lot of early Christians feared pagan temples and artwork as being literally possessed with demons, thus the systematic obliteration, desecration, and destruction that was carried out. After hearing him say the word "demons" twenty million times, it almost got comical and as if he was overstating his case - and then he whips out this little graffiti that said in one slide everything he had been trying to get across.
His lecture also pointed out an interesting bit of cultural bias - it was genuinely startling to hear "Christians desecrated this pagan temple by turning it into a church" because one is so used to hearing about Christian churches being desecrated and because the bias (even among scholars) has been that Christians turning temples into churches was sort of a bonus - that the temples were being "corrected" somehow. But, well - a pagan worshiper at that temple would have indeed considered it a desecration - a de-consecration, or a forcible change from the place's original purpose. And since Christians (of which I am one) would no doubt feel very strongly about St. Peter's being turned into a Zoroastrian fire altar, I think the feelings of pagan worshipers who have been forced to watch as their temple of Athena was turned into a Christian church can be imagined.
Anyway, it was an interesting lecture and let me ponder some big thinky thoughts, so it was a night well spent. But I'm so disappointed that he didn't use one of my favorite little medieval panels, now at the National Gallery in DC - St. Appolonia Destroying a Pagan Idol, aka Saint With Sledgehammer.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-08 10:06 pm (UTC)Quoth Siena: "And, you know, early Christians were pretty proud of themselves for destroying pagan statuary, so I don't think that calling them out on it is exactly unfair. They did what they thought was right, but so did the Taliban when they blew up the giant Buddas in Afghanistan in the past few years, and so did the Russian Communist Party when it removed relics of saints from many churches and publicly destroyed them"
What I don't understand, Genibee, is why you hate freedom. *grin*
Seriously, enjoyed the post, thanks! :)
Cherbera